North Korea

North Korea   (Nation, Enemy image)
Location	Asia
Type	nation state
Interest of	Tim Shorrock
Member of	UN
Subpage	•North Korea/Nuclear weapons
One of the most politically and culturally isolated nations in the world, partly by military-strategic choice, partly caused by fierce economic sanctions.

North Korea was sharply divided from South Korea at the end of the Korean War. It has very limited commercial and other relationships with most other nation states, partly by military-strategic choice, partly caused by fierce economic sanctions.

Official narrative

North Korea was named as an "Axis of evil" member, and the country is reported to have a poor record as regards human rights.

Atrocity fabrication

1998 fall, a North Korean defector videotaped what's going on in North Korea at the risk of his life. KBS obtained the tape from RENK, a japan's civic group, and made the documentary in the past. North Korea would be different today, but the video is still relevant some.

Since the 1990s, atrocity fabrication has played a central role in Western efforts to shape public opinion of North Korea, with North Korean defectors residing in the West often being at the crux of these efforts. Defectors have consistently been able to derive significant financial benefits from denouncing their former homeland, with the more extreme stories gaining the most publicity. The most influential and best publicised testimonies alleging the most egregious abuses by the Korean state, for example Shin Dong-hyuk or Park Yeonmi) have consistently suffered from serious inconsistencies.

Famine

In sharp contrast to the affluence of South Korea, North Korea suffered a severe famine after the collapse of its trading partners. In the late 1990s hundreds of thousands of people (at least) died from starvation. Since then, the country has struggled to maintain self-sufficiency in food. 2016 government warning told people to prepare for food shortages but not to despair, because "the road to revolution is long and arduous."

Internet

In December 2016, a query of their DNS revealed that their national top level internet domain (.pk) was used by just 28 websites.

Nuclear Weapons

North Korea reported a successful nuclear test on 9 October 2006, and a H-bomb test on 5 January 2016. It is believed to have nuclear weapons, although the truth of these claims is debated.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Bruce Cumings	“The Korean War did not begin on June 25, 1950, much special pleading and argument to the contrary. If it did not begin then, Kim II Sung could not have "started" it then, either, but only at some earlier point. As we search backward for that point, we slowly grope toward the truth that civil wars do not start: they come. They originate in multiple causes, with blame enough to go around for everyone—and blame enough to include Americans who thoughtlessly divided Korea and then reestablished the colonial government machinery and the Koreans who served it. How many Koreans might still be alive had not that happened? Blame enough to include a Soviet Union likewise unconcerned with Korea's ancient integrity and determined to "build socialism" whether Koreans wanted their kind of system or not. How many Koreans might still be alive had that not happened? And then, as we peer inside Korea to inquire about Korean actions that might have avoided national division and fratricidal conflict, we get a long list indeed.”	Bruce Cumings	2005
Bruce Cumings	“The United States is the power that introduced nuclear weapons into Korea, and it took this drastic step primarily to stabilize volatile North-South relations. Always suspicious of North Korea's intentions, in the mid-1950s the Eisenhower Administration also worried that South Korean President Syngman Rhee might reopen the war. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles wanted to restrain both sides — with nuclear weapons. Even hotheads like Rhee and Kim Il Sung, he believed, would think twice before starting a war that would rain atomic destruction on the peninsula. In January of 1958 the United States positioned 280mm nuclear cannons and "Honest John" nuclear-tipped missiles in South Korea; these were followed a year later by nuclear-tipped Matador cruise missiles. Soon American and South Korean defense strategy rested on routine plans to use nuclear weapons very early in any new war — at "H + 1," according to one former U.S. commander in Korea, meaning within one hour (more likely a few hours) of the outbreak of war if large masses of North Korean troops succeeded in attacking south of the DMZ. Annual "Team Spirit" military exercises included rehearsals for battlefield nuclear war. North Korea responded by building enormous facilities underground or in mountain redoubts, from troop and materiel depots to munitions factories and warplane hangars. This was a bit of a problem for American surveillance, in that it allowed for a great many places to hide an atomic bomb.”	Bruce Cumings	2005
Bruce Cumings	“Destruction was particularly acute in the North, which was subjected to years of American bombing, including with napalm. Roughly 25 percent of its prewar population was killed, Professor Cumings said, and many of the survivors lived underground by the war’s end. “North Korea was flattened,” he said. “The North Koreans see the American bombing as a Holocaust, and every child is taught about it.”	Bruce Cumings	2018
Vladimir Putin	“Western countries have been saying for centuries that they bring freedom and democracy to other nations. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead of bringing democracy they suppressed and exploited, and instead of giving freedom they enslaved and oppressed. The unipolar world is inherently anti-democratic and unfree; it is false and hypocritical through and through. The United States is the only country in the world that has used nuclear weapons twice, destroying the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. And they created a precedent. Recall that during WWII the United States and Britain reduced Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne and many other German cities to rubble, without the least military necessity. It was done ostentatiously and, to repeat, without any military necessity. They had only one goal, as with the nuclear bombing of Japanese cities: to intimidate our country and the rest of the world. The United States left a deep scar in the memory of the people of Korea and Vietnam with their carpet bombings and use of napalm and chemical weapons. It actually continues to occupy Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and other countries, which they cynically refer to as equals and allies. Look now, what kind of alliance is that? The whole world knows that the top officials in these countries are being spied on and that their offices and homes are bugged. It is a disgrace, a disgrace for those who do this and for those who, like slaves, silently and meekly swallow this arrogant behaviour. They call the orders and threats they make to their vassals Euro-Atlantic solidarity, and the creation of biological weapons and the use of human test subjects, including in Ukraine, noble medical research. It is their destructive policies, wars and plunder that have unleashed today’s massive wave of migrants. Millions of people endure hardships and humiliation or die by the thousands trying to reach Europe.”	Vladimir Putin	2022

 

Event

Event	Description
Korean War/Biological warfare	Alleged experimental usage of insect-born biological/bacteriological weapons during the Korean war

 

Group

Group	Start	Description
Kim Il-sung University	1 October 1946	The first and most important university in North Korea

 

A citizen of North Korea on Wikispooks

Title	Born
Kim Jong-un	8 January 1982

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Good war - Bad war	article	12 February 2014	John Pilger	A short readable expose of how the myth of the "Good War" is used by the Western Establishment to fashion our 'reality' - focussing on the largely forgotten devastation visited upon the Korean peninsular by the US and its victorious World War II allies.
Document:Korea and the "Axis of Evil"	article	2002	Brian Willson
Document:North Korea - The Grand Deception Revealed	article	10 March 2017	Christopher Black	Post-WWII Korean history and the relentless demonisation of North Korea by the US.
Document:The Korea issue is now in the hands of the BRICS	Article	3 September 2017	Adam Garrie	"Simon says: 'There's a 7½-hour flight from the BRICS summit in Xiamen, China to Pyongyang, North Korea so if Sergei Lavrov and the Chinese FM took that flight together to meet Kim Jong-un, it would have huge impact, and get the ball rolling on dialogue'."
Document:The sinking of the Cheonan: Another Gulf of Tonkin incident	article	20 May 2010	Stephen Gowans	A parallel between the Cheonan incident and the Gulf of Tonkin.
Document:There is no military solution in North Korea	Interview	5 September 2017	Mishal Husain	Former Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell says the United States needs to bring the international community together more effectively over North Korea
Document:US Nuclear Policy Review: The World Is Our Enemy	Article	8 February 2018	Christopher Black	“We (the United States) will keep you guessing as to when and against whom we will use them (nuclear weapons). We will maintain our role as the greatest state terrorist by keeping the nuclear Damocles sword over the heads of the people of the world constantly to ensure that the world acts in our interest.”
Document:Washington Considers Military Action Against North Korea to Force Regime Change	article	7 March 2017	Stephen Gowans	A history of Post-WWII US military threats against North Korea leading to the latest escalation in Spring 2017, with due weight given to the North Korean perspective
Document:Why Does the West Hate North Korea?	article	8 March 2016	André Vltchek	Suppressed information about North Korea and suggestions as to why it gets such a bad press in the West

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